Steamboat Springs Parks, Open Space and Recreational Services Department supervisor Craig Robinson said Wednesday that crews with Nordic Excavating and Ecological Resource Consultants have embarked on a month-long project that will install boulder clusters and shape channels in the river to improve its aquatic habitat and make it more habitable to fish and anglers alike.

“These improvements will benefit everybody,” Robinson said, noting that as a secondary benefit the project should improve recreational opportunities on the stretch of the river that has suffered from severe bank erosion…

In addition to the restoration project, the city has plans to add paved access and a parking lot to the piece of open space for use by anglers and kayakers.

Grant funding also will cover revegetation in the area.

In June, the city received a $2.4 million grant from GOCo to fund the river restoration project and also to help secure a conservation easement south of city limits…

Work on the Yampa also is supported by a $150,000 grant from the Bureau of Land Management through the America’s Great Outdoors program.

The Leadership Committee will be meeting at the offices of the Garfield County School District R2-E, on Wednesday, November 28th, 2012, from 8:00 to 9:15 AM. The District offices are located at 339 Whitewater Avenue, Rifle, CO.

We welcome all of our Partners and members of the public to join us for an educational field tour on Wednesday, November 28th beginning at 9:30 AM and running until approximately 11:30 AM. Please RSVP by clicking here. Along with our host, Steve Anthony, Director of Garfield County’s Vegetation Management program, see first-hand the collaborative work on the part of a number of agencies and private landowners to promote tamarisk control within portions of our watershed. We will be looking at two projects currently underway along the mainstem of the Colorado River near Rifle: Lion’s Park and the Gypsum Ranch.

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It’s no surprise that people settle near surface water. Here’s the release from the United States Geological Service (James Coles/Kara Capelli):

The loss of sensitive species in streams begins to occur at the initial stages of urban development, according to a new study by the USGS. The study found that streams are more sensitive to development than previously understood.

“We tend not to think of waterways as fragile organisms, and yet that is exactly what the results of this scientific investigation appear to be telling us,” said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. “Streams are more than water, but rather communities of interdependent aquatic life, the most sensitive of which are easily disrupted by urbanization.”

Contaminants, habitat destruction, and increasing streamflow flashiness resulting from urban development can degrade stream ecosystems and cause degradation downstream with adverse effects on biological communities and on economically valuable resources, such as fisheries and tourism.

For example, by the time urban development had approached 20 percent in watersheds in the New England area, the aquatic invertebrate community had undergone a change in species composition of about 25 percent.

The study also found that the health of highly-degraded streams can be improved by implementing management actions that are designed to reduce specific stressors.

“Biological communities were not resistant to even low levels of urban development. In the study sensitive invertebrate species were being lost over the initial stages of development in relatively undisturbed watersheds,” said Dr. Gerard McMahon, lead scientist on the study. “Understanding how stream ecosystems are impacted by urban development can assist in the development of management actions to protect and rehabilitate urban stream ecosystems.”

The study also found that the effects of urbanization on the biological community vary geographically depending on the predominant land cover and the health of the community prior to urban development. In the study, the greatest loss of sensitive species occurred in Boston, Portland, Salt Lake City, Birmingham, Atlanta, and Raleigh metropolitan areas, where the predominant land cover was forested prior to urban development. The smallest loss of sensitive species occurred in Denver, Dallas, and Milwaukee metropolitan areas where land cover was primarily agriculture before urban development.

“The reason for this difference was not because biological communities in the Denver, Dallas, and Milwaukee areas are more resilient to stressors from urban development, but because the biological communities had already lost sensitive species to stressors from pre-urban agricultural land use activities,” said McMahon.

Although urban development creates multiple stressors, such as an increase in concentrations of insecticides, chlorides, and nutrients, that can degrade stream health—no single factor was universally important in explaining the effects of urban development on stream ecosystems. The USGS developed an innovative modeling tool to predict how different combinations of urban-related stressors affect stream health. This tool, initially developed for the New England area, can provide insights on how watershed management actions to improve one or more of these stressors may increase the likelihood of obtaining a desired biological condition.

The effects of urbanization on streams, including information about this and past studies, as well as graphics and maps, and videos can be online.

Results of this nationwide study and details about the effects of urbanization on the nine metropolitan areas can be found in a new USGS publication titled, “Effects of urban development on stream ecosystems in nine metropolitan study areas across the United States.”

Management strategies used throughout the U.S. to reduce the impacts of urban development on stream ecosystems are described in a new USGS report written in partnership with the Center for Watershed Protection in Maryland titled, “Strategies for Managing the Effects of Urban Development on Streams.”

This study was done by the USGS National Water-Quality Assessment Program, which conducts regional and national assessments of the nation’s water quality to provide an understanding of water-quality conditions, whether conditions are getting better or worse over time, and how natural features and human activities affect those conditions.

Interim City Manager Deb Hinsvark said [November 8] that the scope of the fee, or whether it will be assessed at all, will depend on the results of a $180,000 infrastructure study of Steamboat’s bridges, culverts and dams that is expected to be completed by the end of this year…

If a fee system is implemented, Steamboat would join several other growing Colorado municipalities that already charge residents a monthly bill to help pay for their own infrastructure upgrades. A March 2011 study conducted for the city of Greeley by AMEC engineering showed residents in 30 Front Range municipalities from Lakewood to Fort Collins typically were paying between $1.98 per month to $14.26 per month for stormwater infrastructure. Fort Collins represented the high end of the spectrum.

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Oral arguments in the lawsuit brought by the National Ski Areas Association against new permit requirements from the U.S. Forest Service were heard on Thursday. Here’s a report from Jason Blevins writing for The Denver Post. From the article:

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge William Martinez entertained oral arguments from both sides in a case that could decide the fate of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of ski-area water rights. Citing 140 years of federal laws and court decisions, NSAA lawyer Zeke Williams argued the agency overstepped its authority with the new directive, which he called a “sea change in agency law.”

“The agency can point to no statute that authorizes it to condition use and occupancy permits on the permit holder assigning to the Forest Service property that is not federal property,” Williams said.

The Forest Service says it changed the law to prevent ski areas from selling water rights connected to federal land…

“Why would a ski area sell off water rights and leave itself with insufficient water to operate a ski area?” he said. “Then you are not a ski area anymore.”

Williams argued that the Forest Service rule was a “draconian and punitive solution to a hypothetical problem.”[…]

Williams on Thursday argued that the agency violated the Federal Administrative Procedural Act by not offering legal support for the rule and not soliciting public input on the new rule…

“In the history of this policy, it is very clear that we are not deviating from the overall history of the policy,” Samford said. “If you have a federal permit on federal land and you want water rights in service of that permit you need to claim them in the name of the United States.”